A weblog on mainly militairy models in mainly 1/72. Expect a lot of posts on tank & figure models from Revell, Italeri and Armourfast.

Monday, 11 July 2011

Leopard I A5

The Leopard I A5 is one of the last types of the Leopard I used by various armies around Europe like Belgium, Denmark, Germany and The Netherlands. It's sometimes refered to as the Leopard I A1A1. A distinctive feature of the Leopard I A5 are the turretshields, the big lights on the turret are gone however. The Leopard I is armed with a 105mm gun like it's M60, Strv103 and Merkava I counterparts. This is slightly more then the T55 but less then the T62 and successors.

The Revell model (03115) is a very well, and if I'm correct the only, model of this version of the Leopard I A5 in 1/72 scale. The about 150 parts go together without problem and there is excelent detail all over the model. I've seen several Leopard I's in a museum last weekend and was sincerely suprised how well the model is made, Revell certainly didn't cut corners on this one! If you want to make the model even better you might want to add small chains for the caps of the smoke canisters, the handgrabs on the turret and chains. The only weak part are the pins that attach the shields to the turret but they are not so visible.

I made the model almost straight from the box, I just made my own chains from copperwire. One of the turret hatches is form the Hasegawa Leopard II because I lost the original one. The crew figures are from the Hasegawa Leopard II and M1E1 Abrams.